Corsair's robust Survivor GT 8GB

Asthe name implies, Corsair has introduced an 8 GB USB drive that can survive just about anything. They are actually not exaggerating, as this drive looks like a miniature nuclear weapon, at least the ones that we’ve seen in the movies.

In the aftermath of Vienna's deadliest storm in decades

The company markets this product as something that will survive really tough conditions including earthquakes, storms and hurricanes. We tested it under Vienna’s deadly summer storm some time ago and the Survivor wouldn't give you an impression that it just survived the worst Austrian weather in years without a scratch.

Dog tag, chain and nuke container

The package includes a metal chain and dog tags that gives the device even more flavor and, under its heart of steel (or aluminum to be exact) you'll find 8GB of super fast memory.

It's kind of big when it comes to fitting it in your pocket, but this really depends on your dressing style, i.e. the size of your pockets. It will fit perfectly in your backpack, a notebook bag or a jacket pocket, but it might not be that comfortable to carry around in your jeans pockets.

The small nuke design case is made of aluminum and the “nuke” is sealed with a black rubber rim which will prevent any water from coming anywhere near the memory chips.

The rubber seal works flawlessly

As there is not much rocket science when it comes to testing USB drives, we wanted to see how fast this robust thing is.

The Survivor GT 8GB needs 40 seconds to copy a 700 MB AVI file and this is great score. You can store some eleven AVI movies on it and that task would take 7.3 minutes or about 440 seconds, again a great score.

It takes an astonishing 4.5 seconds to copy 13 MP3 files from Alice in Chains Unplugged album and this is also excellent. This folder takes up 65.5 MB and copies, so to say, almost instantly.

It takes 10 seconds to copy a 103 MB folder with 97 files and three subfolders, containing 53 pictures (aprox. 102 MB), while the rest are small text files, a flash memory nightmare.

Water resistant up to 200m, or 600 feet

Corsair Survivor also comes with the TrueCript 4.3 software which can allocate a piece of your drive and lock it to the prying eyes of a stranger. This is definitely useful for anyone who have something to hide, as losing your USB key might be a very ugly experience.

Conclusion

We believe that Corsair has made a device that will fit the needs of the many. If you don’t fall for the robust aluminum casing you can get yourself a Voyger GT 8GB which will get you the same performance, as it uses the same memory chips.

If you want something to last a 100 years then this is the drive to go for. It is extremely fast and the whole 8GB can bit filled with videos in seven and a half minutes and nothing has to be faster than that.

Regardless of its robust design it's really light, since it's made out of aluminum and has a high quality finish. We can recommend it to anyone who likes a somewhat more extreme design.